Scat

  Dr. Dressier explained that the Black Vine Swamp was so dense and jungly that the floodlights from the fire trucks were useless. "The searchers will return at sunrise," he said.

  Miss Moffitt stared glumly out the window. "This is terrible. We should've never let her go back there alone."

  "You had no choice. It was more important to move the students out safely," Dr. Dressier said. "Both of you go home and get some rest. I'll be in touch if I hear any news."

  Once Mr. Neal and Miss Moffitt had left, the headmaster phoned the county sheriff's office and said he wanted to report a missing teacher. The dispatcher said a deputy would come to the school and take all the information.

  While he was waiting, Dr. Dressier opened a legal pad and uncapped a silver fountain pen, which had been a gift from the Class of 2003. He knew he had to write something about the wildfire and Mrs. Starch to read at the morning assembly.

  He couldn't imagine what he could possibly say that would settle the questions everyone at the Truman School would be asking, or that would stop a dozen wild rumors from racing through the halls.

  Miss Moffitt was right. This was a terrible thing.

  Libby Marshall was so wired after the field trip that her parents didn't think they'd ever get her to sleep. She couldn't stop talking about Mrs. Starch, wondering why she hadn't shown up at school with the asthma inhaler.

  "I hope she's okay," Libby told her father. "What if she got caught in the fire? What if she's hurt?"

  Libby's mother said, "I'm sure she's all right, sweetie. I bet she'll have your medicine waiting for you in class tomorrow."

  Her dad wasn't so certain. Jason Marshall was a detective for the Collier County sheriff's office. He got concerned when Libby told him about the wildfire, and about the teacher who went back alone to retrieve Libby's inhaler. It seemed strange that Mrs. Starch hadn't even phoned.

  While Libby was brushing her teeth, Jason Marshall went to the kitchen and quietly called a friend who was a firefighter. The firefighter said that the blaze near the Big Cypress was no longer burning, but he confirmed that the crews had found an automobile registered to a woman named Bunny Starch, who was missing and believed lost in the swamp.

  Libby's father didn't want to upset Libby even more, so he didn't tell her what he'd learned. She'd find out soon enough-probably the minute she got to school the next day.

  Finally, around ten-thirty, Libby finally drifted off. Within half an hour her mother was out like a light, too. Bonnie Marshall owned a popular breakfast shop on Marco Island, and every morning she got up before dawn to make the long drive.

  Now it was Jason Marshall who couldn't fall asleep. He sat up in bed with a book open on his lap, but he wasn't reading. His thoughts were on Libby's teacher.

  Any half-intelligent person could survive a night in the Big Cypress. All you had to do was hunker down someplace dry and be still. Except for the bugs, nothing would bother you-at least no wild animals would.

  The worst thing was to panic and go thrashing off into the wilderness, which was a good way to get bitten by a water moccasin or gored by a wild pig or chased by a bear. Jason Marshall hoped that Libby's biology teacher had the common sense to remain calm and wait for help to arrive.

  It was well past midnight when Jason Marshall's eyelids grew heavy and he turned off the light. The next thing he knew, Bonnie was shaking him by the shoulders because their dog was barking furiously in the living room. The clock on the nightstand said 2:20 a.m.

  "Sam's going nuts," Bonnie told him. "You better go check on him."

  Sam was a black Labrador retriever. He was five years old and extremely mellow-he seldom barked at anything, even stray cats. Jason Marshall opened the drawer of the nightstand and took out his police revolver, which had a combination lock on the trigger.

  He pulled on his jeans and hurried to the living room, where Sam stood rigidly at the front door. The dog was growling, and the hair on his ruff bristled.

  "Easy, boy," Jason Marshall said, and popped the trigger lock off the pistol. The detective felt his heart hammering in his rib cage; he'd never seen Sam so intense.

  "Who's there?" he said through the door.

  No reply. Sam cocked his big black head and whined.

  "Who is it?" Jason Marshall demanded again.

  He heard nothing on the other side. Quietly he unbolted the door, Sam gazing up at him expectantly.

  "Sit," Jason Marshall said, and the dog sat.

  The detective's gun was in his right hand. He placed his left hand on the door, flung it open, raised the revolver, and stepped outside.

  Nobody was there. Sam followed Jason Marshall across the open porch and down the front steps. There the dog halted, lifted his quivering wet nose, and sniffed the night air.

  Nothing moved in the front yard, which was illuminated by a pale crescent moon. The crickets were chirping and the geckos were trilling, and everything seemed perfectly peaceful.

  "What'd you hear, boy?" Jason Marshall asked Sam, who began following an invisible trail down the walkway, toward the gate.

  Maybe it was a raccoon, thought the detective, or a possum.

  Whatever the intruder was, Sam seemed satisfied that he'd done his job and scared it away. Wagging his tail, he casually strolled off to relieve himself in Bonnie Marshall's prized vegetable garden.

  Jason Marshall tucked the revolver into his waistband and walked around the house to check the backyard. The dog quickly caught up and loped ahead playfully. When they returned to the front of the house, Sam bounded up the steps and began nosing intently around the porch.

  Bonnie Marshall peeked out the door. Libby, in her robe and fuzzy slippers, stood behind her.

  "Everything's fine. Dog must've heard a raccoon," Jason Marshall said. "Back to bed, scooter."

  "But Sam never barks," Libby said sleepily, "and I totally heard him barking."

  "Well, maybe it was a whole herd of raccoons," her mother said. "Now he's his sleepy old self again, so let's hit the sack. Momma's gotta be up early tomorrow."

  "Dad, how come you've got your gun out?"

  Jason Marshall glanced down at the grip of the pistol sticking up from his jeans. "In case there was a prowler," he said to Libby, "but there wasn't. Now go back to bed, sugar-"

  "Hey, who gave Sam a new toy?" she asked.

  Jason Marshall turned and saw the Labrador sitting proudly in the doorway, holding something shiny in his mouth. His tail whipped back and forth like a hairy windshield wiper.

  "Put it down, Sam. Down!" Bonnie Marshall said.

  The dog happily ignored her.

  She said, "Jason, you'd better get that thing away from him before he swallows it."

  Sam was famous for eating items other than food. Jason Marshall grabbed Sam's collar and tugged him inside the house. Then he began the slimy chore of prying the dog's jaws apart with his fingers, which wasn't easy.

  "C'mon, be a good boy," Jason Marshall implored. "Drop it, Sam."

  The dog decided he was in the mood for a chase and started dashing in crazy circles around the room. Every time the Marshalls had him cornered, he'd squirt through their legs and take off running again.

  "I give up," Bonnie Marshall said finally. "Good night, all."

  Libby kicked off her slippers. "Me, too," she sighed, and headed for her room.

  Jason Marshall sat down in an armchair to wait. With nobody pursuing him, Sam soon got bored with the game. He lay down panting on the rug and dropped his mystery toy at Jason Marshall's feet.

  Libby's father sat forward, staring in surprise. He picked up the small plastic tube, wiped off the dog slobber, and looked at the initials written with a green Sharpie on the cap.

  There was no mistake.

  It was his daughter's asthma inhaler, the one that she'd lost in the Black Vine Swamp.

  FIVE

  The Truman School had once been known as the Trapwick Academy, named after the man who had founded it eighteen years earlier. Vincent Z. Trap
wick was a rich Rhode Island banker who'd moved to southwest Florida and gotten even richer.

  Vincent Trapwick didn't want his three snotty, pampered children attending school with ordinary kids, so he started his own private school and kept out just about everyone who didn't have the same skin color, religion, and political point of view as Vincent Trapwick.

  As a result, the Trapwick Academy had a ridiculously small enrollment and lost money by the bucketful, although Vincent Trapwick didn't seem to care. When he died, he left two hundred thousand dollars to the school, which was a generous amount but hardly enough to keep it running forever.

  So the board of trustees gradually loosened up the admissions policy and began reaching out to the community, recruiting all kinds of students. For the first time, scholarships were offered to bright kids and athletes whose families couldn't afford the expensive tuition. Enrollment grew steadily, and so did the Trapwick Academy's reputation.

  Things were rolling along smoothly until Vincent Trapwick's own kids-now graduated and grown to adulthood-started getting into trouble. The eldest, Vincent Jr., was caught embezzling millions of dollars from his late father's bank to support wild gambling junkets to Monaco. The middle one, Sandra Sue, on three occasions drank too much beer and drove her golf cart off the Naples Pier. The youngest, Iggy, was arrested for ripping off Social Security checks from old folks living in the chain of shabby nursing homes that he owned.

  The name Trapwick kept popping up in the newspapers, and not in a way that was flattering to the Trapwick Academy. Ironically, the same spoiled children for whom the school was created had grown up to become its most embarrassing advertisements.

  In an emergency meeting-held late one night after Iggy Trapwick had been stopped at the Sarasota airport while wearing a diaper stuffed with cash-the board of trustees voted unanimously to change the academy's name. They chose to call it the Truman School, after President Harry S. Truman (who'd been dead for a long time and therefore was unlikely to cause any public relations problems).

  To save money, the board voted not to replace the entire granite statue of Vincent Z. Trapwick that stood in front of the school auditorium. Instead, a local sculptor was hired to chisel off Vincent Trapwick's face and reshape the remaining nub of stone into the studious features of the thirty-third president of the United States.

  The sculptor did the best he could, working on a tight schedule with a low budget. The statue's new face was distinguished enough, but as small as a kitten's.

  Unfortunately, the finished piece did not bear a striking resemblance to Harry S. Truman. The body was all wrong, and nothing could be done about it. Vincent Z. Trapwick had weighed two hundred fifty-one pounds, while President Truman had weighed only one hundred seventy-five. As a result, most people viewing the school's statue for the first time had no idea who it was supposed to be.

  When Nick and Marta stepped off the bus, three sheriff's deputies were standing by the odd granite figure, guessing aloud at its identity.

  "What's going on?" Marta said to Nick.

  "Don't ask me. Maybe it's Just-Say-No Day."

  Once a year, the Truman School brought in police officers, doctors, and counselors to speak to the students about drug and alcohol abuse. However, the three deputies acted like they were on a call. They carried clipboards and had their portable radios turned on.

  "Something's up," said Marta.

  Nick agreed. "Maybe there was another break-in."

  Over the Christmas holidays, burglars had stolen several laptops from the school's computer lab. The culprits were two teenaged brothers from Fort Myers who were later caught speeding through a red light, the missing laptops stacked in the bed of their father's pickup truck. The kids had confessed that they intended to pawn the computers and use the money to buy video games.

  Marta nudged Nick and told him to ask the deputies why they were there. Probably because his dad was a military officer, Nick had no problem dealing with authority fig-ures (except for Mrs. Starch).

  As he approached one of the deputies, he heard her joking that the Harry Truman statue looked like "a bowling pin in an overcoat."

  "Excuse me," Nick interrupted politely. "Did something happen here at the school this morning?"

  Caught by surprise, the deputy suddenly got serious. "We can't talk about it. Your principal will make an announcement."

  "The headmaster, you mean," Nick said.

  "Same difference."

  The first bell rang, and students started pouring into the auditorium. Marta and Nick found an empty row in the back, near the door. Usually the morning assembly was incredibly boring-a good opportunity to finish your homework or to return your text messages.

  After the daily blessing, which seemed to drag on forever, Dr. Dressier approached the podium and said he had a short statement to read. He unfolded a sheet of paper and began:

  "As some of you know, yesterday's field trip to the Black Vine Swamp was ended early because a small wildfire broke out in the area."

  Nick snapped shut his algebra book and sat up. Marta turned off her cell phone.

  "All Truman students were evacuated promptly and returned to campus safely," Dr. Dressier went on. "However, one of our biology teachers-Mrs. Starch-went back down the hiking path to retrieve a student's medicine. She didn't return to the school and hasn't been seen, so we have reason to believe she might have gotten lost and had to spend the night in the swamp."

  A murmur rippled through the auditorium. Marta pinched Nick and said, "Oh . . . my . .. God."

  Nick's mind was racing. He hadn't yet told Marta what he and his mother had seen on the videotape: that the animal he'd thought was a panther was actually a human being, scrambling through the cypresses.

  Now Nick couldn't help but wonder if that mysterious figure wearing the dark belt-the person who'd probably made that creepy animal cry-was involved with Mrs. Starch's disappearance.

  What if it was Smoke? he thought. What if the kid went crazy and did something awful?

  Nick pried Marta's fingers from his arm.

  "The authorities were out there at daybreak to continue searching for Mrs. Starch," Dr. Dressier continued from the stage. "Fortunately, the fire went out and the weather last night was mild, so there's no reason to believe she's in any danger. The search teams are experienced and very thorough, and I'm confident of a positive outcome."

  Nick whispered, "I don't see Smoke anywhere."

  Marta looked up and down the rows of heads in the auditorium. "He's probably just late," she said. "He's always late for assembly."

  "Yeah."

  "This is so freaky, Nick." Marta puffed her cheeks and let the air hiss out. "I mean, I can't stand the woman, but still, to think of her lost in that swamp . . ."

  At the podium, Dr. Dressier turned the paper over and continued reading: "You probably noticed some law enforcement officers on campus this morning. Please don't be alarmed or make any rash assumptions. It's routine procedure in such cases. Students in Mrs. Starch's classes, and the others who went on the field trip, may be called aside to chat with the deputies today. I would encourage you to be as helpful as you can be."

  Marta said, "I better call my mom."

  "What for?" Nick asked.

  "In case there's gonna be something on TV about this. She'll wig out."

  Dr. Dressier concluded his prepared statement and moved on to less exciting announcements about an upcoming soccer tournament, a change in the lunch menu (no chili for a week, due to a spoiled shipment of ground beef), and a new rule in the dress code that banned "all styles of open-toed sandals" on campus.

  The students weren't listening; they were buzzing about Mrs. Starch. The mood in the auditorium was one of restless curiosity, not worry. Thanks to the headmaster's reassuring speech, most of the kids believed that the searchers would soon locate the missing teacher. Once Mrs. Starch was found, the Black Vine Swamp episode would only add to her colorful legend.

  After assembly, Nick and Ma
rta stood by the Harry Truman statue and waited for the bell. Libby Marshall rushed over, highly agitated.

  "Dr. Dressier was wrong-Mrs. Starch isn't lost! She got out of the Glades last night!" Libby blurted. "I've gotta tell him so he can put it on the intercom."

  "You saw her? Where?" Marta asked.

  Libby shook her head. "I didn't see her, but she stopped by my house and left this on the porch!" Libby displayed her asthma inhaler like a trophy.

  "Sam found it. He's our dog." Nick said, "Did anyone actually see her?"

  "No, but Sam heard her on the front steps and started barking like crazy. And who else could it be? She's the one who went back to find my inhaler."

  Although Nick didn't like Mrs. Starch any more than the other students did, he'd been hoping that she wasn't hurt, or worse. Libby's news was encouraging.

  "I wonder why she didn't knock," he said.

  "'Cause it was late," Libby said impatiently, "and the lights were off. She probably didn't want to wake up anybody."

  That made sense to Nick and Marta.

  "Now I've gotta go find Droopy Dressier," said Libby, "and straighten him out." She hurried off.

  The bell rang, and Marta picked up her backpack. "I gotta admit, I'm glad that mean old hag made it out of the swamp okay."

  "Me, too," Nick said.

  "I don't know why we should care what happens to her."

  "Because she was doing a brave thing, going back for Libby's medicine with a wildfire coming."

  Marta shrugged. "Yeah. Even witches have their good days."

  Dr. Dressier was hopeful but perplexed.

  After the assembly, he'd received a call from the fire lieutenant, who reported that Bunny Starch's blue Prius was gone at daybreak when the crews had returned to the Black Vine Swamp. The lieutenant surmised that, sometime during the night, Mrs. Starch had found her way back to her car.

  That theory was bolstered by the information from Libby Marshall, who'd burst into Dr. Dressler's office and blurted the story of her asthma inhaler so breathlessly that he feared she might need to use it.